Iāve been a QA tester for 2 years and I canāt decide whether itās the right time to find a new role. My daily job is comprised of validating user stories, writing test cases and executing manual tests. So far I havenāt spent much time learning automation. Thatās not to say that we canāt, we have the freedom to do so but itās just been time spent here and there. The company is supportive of learning/education and I will be doing ISTQB soon.
Why am I thinking about applying for a new role? There isnāt a lot of testing specific knowledge in the team at the moment. The QA team is young and still developing. Would I be better off joining a company with an established QA team? They will have a strong knowledge base and I can directly learn from them. I donāt know how long it will take for our QA team get there.
Does this sounds like Iām passive bob waiting to be trained? Thatās not what Iām trying to say. I do value spending time outside of work to level up testing skills, but I do have other hobbies as well. Has anyone been in this situation? If there is more info I can add here to clarify, let me know.
P.S. What is it like at the moment seeking and applying remote jobs in QA in the UK during covid?
It does sounds like passive bob indeed but Iāve been in the same situationā¦ sorta. So Iāve worked in QA internally in a company for 5 years. We didnāt actually learn much on the job or couldnāt go take a course or even have ISTQB.
I took it upon myself because I wanted to learn more and moved to a different company which did consultancy. Youāll learn the most there, by far!
All Iām saying is: if your company is supportive of learning and educting you and you can go to a conference or follow a training, it might not be needed to change company. If you want a different working environment and see how other companies/environments work with different workflowsā¦ I would advise to take up a consultancy role, specially if you are dying to learn more. Most consultancy companies do offer atleast 5 trainings a year (of choice) perhaps a conference also.
So if you wish to learn sometimes like automation; have you tried suggesting it to your current company? If their answer is āsureā then no big deal do it, ask some time for it each sprint! If they tell you weāll see in another yearā¦ and you canāt wait that longā¦ then the choice is yours to move on.
I donāt think it sounds like passive Bob, it sounds like someone who cares about doing a good job and wants to continuous improve themselves, and their team.
One way I read this is to lead/be the change you want to see. You mention a āQA teamā that is young and developing, could you be the one to guide them? Will your company help you guide them?
Perhaps you feel like you canāt guide them, but you can, there are lots of great resources around to aid you. Then, as you are clearly aware as you are posting here, there is the fantastic MoT community who are always around to offer support.
Ask the company to invest in a Pro MoT Team account (significantly cheaper than certifications) and starting watching content and courses as a team? Then have discussions and team sessions about how you can use this new information. You could all take our new 99-minute workshops together?
You could create pathways and must watch content for all the team and any new joiners.
Talk to your company about your vision and ideas for the team, get them to invest in resources, but also give you and the team time to do this in work hours. Iām sure the ISTQB training will be in work hours, so they should also give you regular time in the week/month to do other learning, such as watching online courses/content taking live workshops and so forth.
A final option for the company to also consider is investing in a coach for you, to aid you with this journey. MoT recently launched Community Coaching for the exact context you are describing.
Good luck Philip, sounds like a fantastic challenge and adventure to me, and Iād love to see how you try to make it happen
The first thing You should do is talk: talk to Your company and show them Your ideas how to spend time for education, what is needed for it and what benefits would all this have for the company. As I understand from Your post they are quite supportive with learning and educating, maybe they just need an organized push?
The other talk should be with Your QA team. Take the matter in Your hands and do it: present them also Your ideas (preapare them well) and You will see that people will come along. Testers are usually quite curious from nature
If You have really done this all and still feel like ā¦ (no motivation) then start looking for a new place. Remember: itās always easier to whine then actually do things and You will never know is at the new place the grass really greener.
Good luck and I hope this organizing and planning gives You at least a new experience when not more!
Not passive at all.
You might be surprised to hear that this happens a lot in companies. You join, they get on with work, expecting people to join and go straight from off. Training etc is almost an after thought.
I agree with the above posts. If you want things to change and happen, Iām afraid itās down to you. You need to convince or put forward a business case for conferences and training. If budgets are restrictive, then go online and learn.
Invest in yourself and it will work out in the long run.
If climate prevents move, bide your time and use it wisely. Learn new things, then when time comes to move, well, you know youāve done all you could to improve and if the company is not willing to help improve you, in order to help improve their output, then youāve got to think, is that a company I want to work for?
Thank you so much for your input Kristof about the consultancy idea. Maybe a consultancy company is a future goal I can take.
Iām sure my current company will allow me to dedicate some time to learning, the question was more about whether I could accelerate my progress in a team of more knowledgeable people. The comfortable position for me is to stay and I think that is what will happen to be honest. I havenāt applied for jobs for a long time so that process will be harder for me to get into.
Thank you all, I didnāt expect all the comments. Itās clear to me that I should not rely moving positions in order to push me forward. I shall equip myself with the skills by talking to my current company about progressing. I guess itās down to company culture and Iām in a fortunate position where management is open to people learning new skills. I will make use of that rather than dreaming about greener grass.
This I can relate to, in my first company I had a really nice team but the testing process was less than ideal, which made me think that QA career is not for me - I spend time learning to become a web developer. As fate would have it, one of my co-workers moved to a new company and after a year asked me if I would consider moving on as well with a recommendation from him - it was for a QA Analyst role, but he told me that since the company was pretty big I would be able to move to dev after a while.
That was my original plan, but, seeing how testing is done in a serious process made me fall in love with it, I realized that it is such a broad field where you can do a bunch of different activates and there are lot of specializations choices within testing! I discovered automated testing and I never really stopped coding - I just write different sort of code now - luckily no more JS and CSSā¦
If youāre in a similar predicament it might be time to consider moving on, but only you can make that choice, weight the pross against cons and make your decision, good luck!
Keen to hear how our responses changed @pwong outlook on this. All around me people are moving jobs, and even changing their role significantly. But I do hope that since you are coming up to 4 years as a tester, you have shifted gear since you have enough experience. Manual testing counts for a lot if you care about what you are doing and donāt just test the minimum, so that should have gotten you a load of experience.
